1. Field of Invention
The present invention is generally related to a shredder having a supporting structure for reducing the transmission of at least vibrations from a shredder mechanism to a housing.
2. Description of Related Art
A common type of shredder has a shredder mechanism contained within a housing and mounted atop a container. The shredder mechanism typically includes a cutting head assembly including a series of cutter elements that shred articles such as paper, CDs, DVDs, credit cards, and the like that are fed therein and discharge the shredded articles downwardly into the container. An example of such a shredder may be found, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,040,559, which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.
During operation of the shredder (e.g., when users feed articles to be shredded into the shredder mechanism), the cutter element of the shredder mechanism are generally rotating or moving about shafts therein. Such movement or rotation may cause forces to be transferred from the shredder mechanism to the shredder housing, thereby causing vibrations or shaking of the device, as well as the possibility of noise and/or rocking, which is not desirable. Furthermore, when shredders are operated when a bin is near capacity (e.g., when bin is near being full of shredded particles), the machine may be subject to knocking and/or rocking, which is not desirable. It may be beneficial to reduce or eliminate such noise and vibrations in the working environment as they may be undesirable to one or more users.
To assist in preventing noise and vibration that affects the housing, some shredders provide devices (such as springs or elastic pads, for example) adjacent or near a connection point between the shredder mechanism (or cutting head assembly) and the housing. FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a prior art method using elastic pads 100 (shown in detail in FIG. 7) in shredders for attempting to reduce noise and vibrations. The elastic pads 100 are provided on a connection point of the shredder housing 12 and the shredder mechanism 20 to act as a buffer, for example. However, objects such as elastic pads 100 are not capable of effective absorption of movement in an X, Y, or Z direction and rotation about X, Y, and Z axes. Thus, it is still desirable to further improve upon the reduction of noise and vibration in the shredder.